Whilst The Queen Celebrates Jubilee Record level Of Universal Credit Sanctions Published

The poor side of life

A record level number of Universal Credit (UC) sanctions has recently been published by the Department of Work and Pensions on the 22nd May 2022.

It is reported by the DWP that the amount of UC sanctions had reached a record high in January 2022 this is according to statistics released by the DWP in May.

This follows the restrictions during the the pandemic when the DWP had been pressurised to remove work search and availability requirements for UC claimants also suspending face-to-face interviews due to the health risks involved. Work search and availability requirements were reintroduced gradually and are now fully implemented.

According to the latest figures released by the DWP UC sanctions prior to the pandemic consisted of 2.51% of UC claimants being sanctioned. In February 2022 sanction levels had risen dramatically to 3.90%.

According to the report in January 2022 there were reported 38,200 adverse sanction decisions…

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DWP To Start Planned Legacy Claimants Migration To Universal Credit

The poor side of life

With much celebration yesterday evening the DWP announced that their plans to start migrating people from all legacy benefits to Universal Credit (UC) with a commencement date being May 9th. Their target completion date being December 2024. This will leave approximately 900,000 of households worse off whilst claiming UC.

Not only will thousands of claimants previously claiming legacy benefits be hit with lower payments they’re set to also face a benefit freeze leaving them in a much worse financial situation they are already in. They will also be faced with the distress of being forced to accept this whilst struggling financially to cover the basics.

The DWP claim that legacy claimants will be sent a ‘migration notice’ with a three-month deadline to make a claim for UC. If they don’t accept the migration notice or don’t receive it as is often the case with letters from the DWP their benefits…

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Reaching the Tipping Point

rebel notes

I left the Labour Party today. I have cancelled my direct debit to a Party that since April 2020 has been waging a full scale war, not on the most dangerous right-wing government I have lived under, but on its own members. A Party founded by trade unionists and dedicated socialists is embarrassed now by its union links and is a hostile environment for socialists. Latest estimates say 200,000 members have left under Labour’s “new management”.

That should be adjusted to 200,001.

Shadow Cabinet member Rachel Reeves openly rejoices that so many have left, slandering us all as “antisemites”. The same Rachel Reeves who gushingly declared her admiration for the Tory, Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in Britain’s parliament, while ignoring Astor’s fanatical support of Hitler and the fervent hope she expressed that he would solve “the world problem” of “Jews and communism.” Small wonder that Labour MP…

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Tories plan to strip holiday pay, workers’ rights, employer pension contributions after Brexit

Pride's Purge

Why is Theresa May’s former-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab – and other top Tories – so hell-bent on a hard Brexit?

In 2011, Raab said in a policy paper for the rabidly right-wing think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies that holiday pay, the minimum wage, maternity leave and pension contributions for British workers are all ‘strait jackets’ for British businesses and should all be scrapped.

All of which are currently guaranteed under EU regulations.

Coincidence?

.

Here’s a copy of Raab’s shocking policy paper if anyone wants to read it:

Click to access 111114155257-escapingthestraitjacket.pdf

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Group JobCentre Sessions Leave Jobseekers Feeling Abandoned

Same Difference

Here is the link for those who can’t see the Facebook embed above.

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DIRTY TRICKS: Lib Dem Nick Clegg staffer claims to have left LABOUR over anti-semitism

Pride's Purge

A touching tweet and heartfelt blogpost from a Douglas Dowell about how he has left the Labour Party because of anti-semitism has been shared extensively on social media:

In the blogpost, Mr Dowell talks touchingly about how he has “no choice but to resign from the Labour Party” and he says that “someday, I hope there will once again be an anti-racist, internationalist, reliably constitutional social democratic party worth joining.”

Perhaps Douglas is referring to the Liberal Democrats?

Because what Dowell ‘forgets’ to mention is that he is the same Douglas Dowell who was employed in Nick Clegg’s office before he lost his seat, as the Policy Team Leader for the Liberal Democrat Party:

I wonder why no mainstream journalist has yet noticed this little fact?

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Open Letter to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party

Open Letter to the Labour Party NEC

Labour Party members: please add your full name and CLP in the form at the end of this post to have your signature added to the letter. The list will be updated daily.

Dear members of the NEC,

As members of the Labour Party, we, the undersigned, call on the party’s National Executive Committee to resist calls to adopt all eleven examples accompanying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into the party’s code of conduct on antisemitism.

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party and as such must stand up for justice and equality and speak up against oppression. We are gravely concerned that two of the currently omitted examples in particular will be used to silence free speech on Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights and freedom.

The IHRA states that instances of antisemitism may include “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not…

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New-party plan really is “cowards’ coup”. Here’s the plan – and a Labour response

SKWAWKBOX fallback

Cowardly plotters

The SKWAWKBOX warned at the weekend that the next anti-Corbyn coup was already underway – and showed yesterday that it is a ‘coup of cowardice’, with right-wing malcontents attempting to inflict maximum damage on the Labour Party before peeling off to form a tiny new party. This was subsequently confirmed by information leaked to the Daily Express.

Now the SKWAWKBOX can provide further details about how the shaky ‘rebels’ hope to execute their plan – and cowardly barely covers it, but is combined with an arrogance that puts on display an astonishing sense of entitlement.

The malcontents hope to create a new party – but without disaffiliating from the Labour Party. They hope this would result in a formal ‘party within a party’ –  along the lines of the Co-operative Party’s current status – consisting of MPs ‘temporarily’ suspended from representing Labour,

Their idea is that they will…

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Russia: pro-Putin PR organisation was created by Tory Party donors and “approved” by David Cameron

Pride's Purge

A 2013 article on the website of Russian State News Agency TASS claims that not long after a close friend of Vladimir Putin, Vasily Shestakov met David Cameron at a Tory Party fundraiser, the former Tory leader “approved” of the creation of a pro-Russian PR organisation created by two pro-Putin Tory Party donors, Timothy Lewin, David Burnside:

Russia takes new steps to improve its image abroad

MOSCOW, July 9 (Itar-Tass) 

Recently, the Russian authorities have been taking new steps to improve Russia’ image abroad. Thus, the Positive Russia Foundation has been established in London with the aim of creating a positive image of Russia in Great Britain, Izvestia daily said in Tuesday’s issue, quoting Duma MP Vasily Shestakov-one of the head officials of the new foundation, as saying. This organization was registered in London in the end of June. It was established on the initiative of British public activist Baron Tim Lewin…

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Department For Education Blocks Mandatory Reporting Of Abuse – And Survivors From Suing Councils

Researching Reform

In a predictable move, government ministers have shut down the idea of implementing legislation that would make it compulsory for child welfare professionals to report suspected child abuse, after reviewing a consultation on the issue.

The consultation was published today, though unusually, no formal announcement was made.

The Department For Education, which currently oversees all child protection matters, says in its summary that the government, “has considered the issues objectively and from the point of view of what would likely be best for children – informed by, but not bound by the result of the consultation.” 

An article in Care Appointments (linked to above), tells us that the consultation received “over 760 responses from social workers, police officers, local government, children’s charities, educators and health professionals, victim support groups, and other members of the public,” and that “the majority of responses disagreed with the concept of introducing new…

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